Terri Schiavo Is Dead

Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose final years tethered to a feeding tube sparked a bitter feud over her fate that divided a family and a nation, died Thursday, her husband’s attorney said.

Schiavo, 41, died quietly in a Pinellas Park hospice 13 days after her feeding tube was removed despite extraordinary intervention by Florida lawmakers, Congress and President Bush — efforts that were rebuffed at every turn by the courts.

Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Michael Schiavo’s attorney, George Felos, and announced to reporters outside her hospice by a family adviser.

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This poor woman! It never should have come to this. If her husband was so sure she was not feeling anything, why did he not hand her over to the parents who wanted to care for her, and move on with his life with his common law wife and their two kids? What would it have hurt? Nobody knows exactly what or if Terri could feel or understand. Therefore, we should have erred on the side of caution. Dr. Kevorkian is in jail for helping people to die, and yet we let this poor woman die a loooooong torturous death?!? The Pope is now on a feeding tube. Geez, when should we pull his out?

The Pope is on a feeding tube, he is not “brain dead” nor is he in a “persistant vegitative state”; those are grave differences. As for your question, “Who would it have hurt”: It would have hurt Terri. She did not want to be kept alive on feeding tubes, her life was artificial at this point and she stated that she did not want this. People in this country still have the right to personal liberties, including the right to die, thank God.
The bottom line is that this argument is not going anywhere, now that she has died it will probably only get worse. This country is so deeply divided on these issues that it’s frightening. I, for one, have decided to make a living will and I encourage everyone else to do the same. If you can’t count on your own parents to follow your wishes, who can you count on?

I had a good friend who stated vehemently that he did not want to live in an incapacitated state. Then he was in an accident and became a parapalegic. He could only move his head! And his mind had been changed and he fought like hell to live. Unfortunately, he succumbed to pneumonia 2 years after the accident. What you say when you are healthy and when you are not may be two different things. All I am saying is, there was enough doubt that Terri may have been cognizant of things. Nobody knows FOR SURE what she could feel or understand. What if she DID know she was being starved? And I question the motives of the husband simply because he has fought over her like wild dogs over a piece of meat. He said he made her that promise, but didn’t he also make a marriage vow to her? Where did the fiance and two kids come from? He should have just left her to her parents to care for and moved on to care for his two kids. He would not allow her parents access to her during her death, and he does not care that they want to bury her, HE is having her cremated….I would call this a control freak. Why cause the family any more pain? This was definitely not a time for acting in a hateful manner. Her blood relatives should have been given the guardianship. I just have to question the motives of anyone like that. Also, the media has not said much about the bone scan (taken shortly after her collapse) that showed her to have multiple broken bones in various stages of healing, and the affidavit of one of her nurses, Carla Sauer Iyer, who stated that Terry COULD understand and respond. ALL angles should have been looked at carefully. None of those judges ever went to see her for themselves before making their rulings. No, I would not want to live like that, but I would definitely not want to be starved to death!! God Bless Terri Schiavo.

As for the question of who would it have hurt–I was just thinking, would Terri have wanted her parents to be battled and hearbroken as they were? Being a parent myself, I can see what drove them, just wanting their daughter to live. And I can not imagine having someone tell me I could not see my child’s medical records, or that I could not visit her, or I could not order rehabilitation for her, or have a say in her funeral. Sad situation.

I’m just glad that Terri Schiavo is not suffering anymore. I’m sitting on the fence over this issue but i cannot- CANNOT – get over the fact that her dirty pig of a husband did not allow Terri’s parents to be with her as she died. How disgusting is that? I’m beginning to wonder about her husband’s agenda….the dirty pig that he is.

I can see both sides and sympathize with both, but in the end we should all let her rest in peace…how many others in this situation that we dont even hear about?
I for one am going to get a living will because I KNOW I dont want to live that way, and its not up to my parents or anyone else to keep me alive if its something that i dont want.

I too, was on the fence in the beginning of this mess. But yeah, I am really starting to wonder about the husband. He would not let them be with her when she died. He will not let them have a say in her funeral. He would not allow her to have any rehabilitation since 1993 or 1994. He would not allow her to have cards or flowers or to be taken out of her room. He would not allow her to have Communion, then relented the next day…. This guy does not sound like someone who is acting out of love. Thank God I am not married to someone like that!

While I am a bit leery of his decision to keep her family away while she was dying, let us not forget that they have put him through a living hell for the last 15 years. He was, after all, doing what she wished; for that he’s been called a murderer, a liar, and a profiteer. Yes, he is now with another woman and he has two children with her. How easy would it have been for him to walk away and wash his hands of this situation? But, he did not do that. He has been by her side throughout this ordeal and he has fought for her to have the right to die as she wished. And should he not be able to be with another person? Does that say something about his character? What was he, in his 20′s, when this happened to Terri? I don’t think that his moving on with his life after a certain amount of time says anything about him other than he was still in the land of the living, and she was not. I think that it’s admirable that he moved on with his life but still fought for Terri’s right to peace and a death that she specifically wanted.

i don’t know the husbands heart but it seems to me he went through a lot in this case for some reason. some said it was the money, but there is no money. some said he was hiding evidence of abuse but that has been looked into and you can’t tell me that as bad as the state wanted to take her that they would not have done so if there was even a hint of abuse. i know he was locked in battle with the parents and there must have been much hate on both sides but that came after the cases were filed. i think he really cared about her and felt he was doing what she wanted. i also feel the parents were just not able to let go. as a registered nurse i see this from time to time. terri had 20% or less of her brain material left, thats 80% no longer there folks. these results were from a 1996 ct scan read by an uninvolved doctor. nine years later she probably has much less brain left. also there have been many lies told by the family and/or representitives. she was not denied communion. there was a court order saying it was to be given once more but when it was not given when the parents wanted she was “denied”. let us keep in mind who has legal control, the husband. it was said she was trying to speak. this was not possible. let us not forget that judge greer went to terri’s room to have the parents try to get her respond. they could not and with 80% of her brain gone this is not surprising. a friend said terri extended her arms when she was talking to terri about dancing. if you noticed in some of the photos you could see that terri’s arms were pinched tightly against her chest and both hands were in fists. these are contractures and another person could not straighten her arms out and she certainly could not. why would he not let terri out of her room? 200 reporters and 100 protesters might have something to do with it. also in her state there was really no point in her leaving her room or even her bed. do we think she was going to take in a movie? some have complained that the husband ran the family out when she was dying. my understanding is that the husband, her brother and sister were in the room together when the brother started to argue about something and the husband said this was not appropriate at that time and asked that they be escorted out. had they only been quite they may have been allowed to stay for terri’s final minutes. its sad that the parents could not let her go and instead wanted to satisfy their own needs by keeping terri around in this awful state. they had little to lose in this matter. no one called them murders or monsters. others were funding the legal bills for them and they got to play the part of the victims in this soap opera. the husband on the otherhand risked everything for no possible gain that i can see other than to fulfill the wishes of someone he loved and lost too early. he has been branded with every evil name that could be thought of. death threats have been made to him and his family by these supporters of “life”.